Oh crap (How bad is it if you drop your PSU?)

[Trajan]

Any thoughts? I thought I had secured my PSU to my case before tilting it up to a vertical position, and forgot that I had unscrewed it earlier that day to reposition. It fell maybe two and a half feet and hit with a really loud bang, despite hitting the carpet.

I'd previously used the PSU in my old build but it's only about a year old. I'm not sure how paranoid I should be here. Is it safe to plug into my brand new mobo/cpu/gpus?

I guess the question is.. is it likely designed to fail "safe" and not fry my parts, and if so, are those fail safe features themselves likely to survive a fall?

I wouldn't be so nervous but it was such a loud smack.. I gave it a little rattle and heard some tiny things moving in there and a little black dust/grit (grit?!) shook out, and then the rattle went away.

Ugh ugh ugh

(And thanks very much for any advice)

This is an EVGA 750W 80+ Gold modular, if that makes any difference.

 

[sandorski]

Could be fine, could make a loud pop and go up in smoke. Shake it and listen for anything rattling around. Use a flashlight and check for cracks in the PCB. If anything seems broken, try it with old parts first if you don't mind potentially losing them.

 

[thesmokingman]

I take it there wasn't any visible external damage? I would not chance it on your new rig so quickly. I would also try testing it on equipment you can afford to lose before using it on your new nice stuff. The psu is not designed to take a massive G load...

 

[Red Squirrel]

The worse thing I could see maybe happen is the 2 ferrite E's in the transformers might come separated. With all the tape and stuff they'd probably still be touching though so not sure what effects it would have but there would definitely be a small air gap that was not there before. I can't say I've ever actually heard of that happening though or if it really would be an issue.

If you want to be safe I would run a load test with a decent resistive load, try to load it near capacity (for that specific rail) for an hour or so. Try each voltage rail. Note that some like the -12 arn't meant to deliver that much current while others are, there should be a table on it indicating this.

Considering the height it fell from I doubt anything will be damaged though. A hard drive I would be a bit more worried about.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

It's probably fine.

Could run it without anything connected to see if it explodes.

 

[DigDog]

what flapdroll said.


you could just phone the manufacturer and ask them to check it for you.

 

[MrTeal]

I've done a lot worse to PSUs than drop them a couple feet and had them be rock solid though a little dinged up. Try turning it on with a PSU tester/paperclip, and if that works you should be golden.

 

[Trajan]

Thank you all for the advice, I appreciate it! I did hear a small rattle in the PSU after the fall and shook out some black grit - hopefully just dust, but I may have missed some particles. A few hours later I shook it again and there was still a tiny rattle - this time I put a cloth down and after shaking, there was a tiny bead of what I'm pretty certain is solder that fell out of the PSU.

Plugged it in without load and switched it on and nothing happened, but I didn't have any load on it.

I'm going to finish assembling my new build (with cooling loop) unpowered, and then will probably try the PSU with a PSU tester (or since I don't have one, a paperclip...), and if nothing explodes or smokes, I'll try it out on my old system which is currently running on a 4 or 5 year old backup PSU I had lying around. If it fried the old system, that will suck, but better that than the new one!

 

[DigDog]

try to speak to evga first ...

 

[silicon]

Any thoughts? I thought I had secured my PSU to my case before tilting it up to a vertical position, and forgot that I had unscrewed it earlier that day to reposition. It fell maybe two and a half feet and hit with a really loud bang, despite hitting the carpet.

I'd previously used the PSU in my old build but it's only about a year old. I'm not sure how paranoid I should be here. Is it safe to plug into my brand new mobo/cpu/gpus?

I guess the question is.. is it likely designed to fail "safe" and not fry my parts, and if so, are those fail safe features themselves likely to survive a fall?

I wouldn't be so nervous but it was such a loud smack.. I gave it a little rattle and heard some tiny things moving in there and a little black dust/grit (grit?!) shook out, and then the rattle went away.

Ugh ugh ugh

(And thanks very much for any advice)

This is an EVGA 750W 80+ Gold modular, if that makes any difference.

What if you remove the cover and see where these little pieces came from? I would not use it in my computer or in a new build since it is very suspect. Spend the money and get a new PSU.

 

[Z15CAM]

You gotta pull off the case and inspect. I had PSU's with PCB mounting screws rattling an shorting - Check that nothing is loose like: Capacitors, Mosfets,or a cracked PCB especially around the PCB mounting screws.

It's worth the check as your most likely in-tilted to a RMA.

 

[JeffMD]

PSU's use large traces and thick wires due to their power output, it is most likely fine.